ART-TRIBUTE:Venice International Performance Art Week,Part I
Venice International Performance Art Week is the independent on-going live art exhibition project. It’s purpose is to strengthen the importance of the concepts of mobility, art nomadism and temporary community, to offer moments of fruitful encounters and exchange to lay the foundations for future professional opportunities for artists and cultural operators and, finally, paying attention to the creation of a broader audience for performance art.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Venice International Performance Art Week Archive
The Venice International Performance Art Week has been conceived in form of a trilogy. “Hybrid Body-Poetic Body” (2012), “Ritual Body-Political Body” (2014) and “Fragile Body-Material Body” (2016). Each of the three editions consisted of a comprehensive exhibition showing historical performance art pioneers’ works and documentation, alongside the presentation of live art performances. The program was structured: daily morning talks by and encounters with the participating artists, associated curators and cultural operators open to public, series of long durational performances during the afternoons and shorter performance slots in the evenings. The “Art Week-Fringe” section was dedicated to upcoming and emerging artists. In “Hybrid Body-Poetic Body” (8-15/12/12), were explored concepts such as interconnectivity, empathy, struggle, love, political habits and sociability, and how the Self relates to them. Among others was presented: “METANOIA”, ac ollection of 29 film and video works realized between 1966 and 2010 by the pioneer of Conceptual Media Art, Film and Performance, EXPORT. A photographic documentation of Santiago Cao’s 8-hour durational performance installation “Pes(o)soa de Carne e Osso” investigating the questions: How much does meat weigh? And how much does the person behind this meat weigh in a society that negates and annuls people? In prostitution, men and women are simple objects of consumption. In business there are no people; only Human Resources. In colonial times, slaves were treated as merchandise, not as people. Gonzalo Rabanal presented the installation and performance “De la trama del habla a los tramos del cuerpo”. Jan Fabre presented the video installation “Virgin/Warrior”, this joint work by Jan Fabre and Marina Abramović was performed at Palais de Tokio in Paris in 2004. In the episodic cycle the artists were enclosed in a glass cage for 4 hours, dressed in armours. They performed archetypical tasks they imposed on themselves, thus telling a story of violence, sacrifice and forgiveness with their bodies. Gianni Emilio Simonetti presented, the fluxevent “Fluxfood Concert In Venice”, a multitasking performance. An acoustic space-food with music, sound bodies, reverberations, mixes, digital connections. The line of Alperoa’s work in performance, action art and happenings is marked by captivating intimate decisions, poetically-raw acts, as if reality was philosophizing with a hammer. His performances are characterized by a continuous and precarious game of trust – between partners, friends, the artist and the public. The artist presented the live performances “Par de patoz de lanaroja y velas (Serie de acciones performaticas)”.
Info: Curators: VestAndPage (Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes), Venice International Performance Art Week, Duration: 8-15/12/12, www.veniceperformanceart.org
